Social Research Methods
This week’s SOCRMx activity activity is as follows:
This week’s* SOCRMx tasK:
“… locate an example of lying with statistics—whether inadvertent or not—in the wild, online…One place to look for potential examples of ‘lying with statistics’ is in news reports about economics, science, health, education, politics, or another field where numerical data get reported. Other possibilities are advertisements, government or company reports, marketing information, and even popular memes. Your example might be a table, graph, infographic, or short written passage. Continue reading “Lying with statistics”
This week, we revisited the two papers which were introduced in Week 4. As we move into considering data analysis, we were asked to consider a number of questions about each of them. The second paper, by Paddock, is an account of a quantitative study into the allocation of housework tasks. Continue reading “Reading research findings – Kan and Laurie”
This week, we revisited the two papers which were introduced in Week 4. As we move into considering data analysis, we were asked to consider a number of questions about each of them. The first paper, by Paddock, is an account of a qualitative study into food cultures and class. Continue reading “Reading research findings – Paddock”
I was on a train to Gloucester earlier this week and my eyes were drawn to the laptop screen of the woman sitting next to me: the title of the paper she was working on had ‘ethnography’ in it. We began chatting it transpired that she’s Dr. Susan Balderston, a research fellow at Birmingham University. Her current 4-year ethnographic research project is focused on women in prisons. Continue reading “Serendipity”
1. Think of three good research questions that could be answered using this approach.
This week’s challenge involved working with images. There were three possible activities to choose from. I chose option 1:
Option 1: Collect and analyse images. Take a tour of your workplace or your neighbourhood with a camera, create a collage of images that represent a particular concept or theme you are interested in exploring. For example, you might choose ‘rules’ as a theme, and take pictures of things that, directly or indirectly, appear to convey rules about the space you are in; what people are allowed or not allowed to do.
The resulting collection is here. Continue reading “Working with images”
This week, I’m ‘working with images’. As part of this, I’ve been exploring data visualisations and infographics. Some of my favourites are here. Can you guess what they show? Answers are here. Continue reading “Infographics quiz”
1. Think of three good research questions that could be answered using this approach.
It’s worth noting that I have a personal interest in each of the three possible areas of study outlined below. As Blum Malley and Hawkins advise, “no matter what, the most important factor when selecting your own site is choosing a place or space or group of people to whom you already feel connected in some way, either by direct membership, burgeoning interest, or cultural/political belief…’ Continue reading “Ethnography as a research method”
This week’s adventure in research involved engaging in an observation and taking notes. This was the challenge:
“Find a public space that interests you and spend a few hours (over a period of a few days, ideally) making some field notes about what you see going on. The following questions might be useful as a guide to your field notes: